A remake of a cult-classic that is so
pointless and irritating that it practically offends me. This was not made because - (as in the case
of Tim Burton’s Charlie & the
Chocolate Factory) – a filmmaker loves a story and wants to apply his own
style and vision to it. This was not
made for love but just because someone shopped it around as an easy property to
remake, and one by one, people attached themselves to it out of some hazy respect
for the original film. Robin Hardy’s The
Wicker Man of 1973 was so original and powerful that it really is one of
those things that should just be left alone.
Nevertheless, if a remake is to be done, at least let it improve or
elaborate on the things that make the original so good. This version fails to do even that, producing
a cliché-ridden bore that was laughed off the screens all across the
country. There was something ominously
plausible about an island of pagans living in the remote Scottish isles in
Hardy’s film, but here everything’s been transferred to the modern day American
northwest, and the cultists are no longer devotees of the “old religion,” but
some weird uber-feminist new age religion revolving around bees for some
reason. The need of a virgin sacrifice
was key to the original, but Nicolas Cage’s involvement negated this because it
was decided, by committee no doubt, that Mr. Cage cannot plausibly be portrayed
as a virgin in this day and age, so his special weakness is transformed into an
allergy to bees. Yes, an allergy to
bees. At first, this whole premise might
seem odd for writer/director Neil LaBute, whom I’ve never liked at all, but it
actually does match his sensibility quite well, what with the hero being the
victim of a vast practical joke and the psychotic hatred of one sex for the
other, themes that play themselves out his other movies. One minor point of interest regarding the use
of the bees and bee imagery relates to LaBute’s Mormon background. Utah Beehive State
No comments:
Post a Comment